Even when you do that, Xuen keeps tanking Then you BoP him and even THAT won't put an end to his troll-tiger.

More seriously though, I also co-tank with a monk, and aside from JinRohk (between tosses and tank swapping with no V), I have no problems holding threat. In fact, I actually need to salv myself a few times a raid during swaps. But, granted, that's AFTER we have high-V levels, which I'm sure has more to do with it than skill

On a semi-related note, I'm debating shelving my DK back even further in favor of my long-neglected, ex-main Prot Warrior after seeing the bonuses and scaling they've got coming up next tier. Not sure how strong they're looking in terms of DPS vs a ProtPal, but I'm still expecting Monk > Bear > Prots = DK in terms of DPS next tier. Does that sound about right?

Oh, sure, once I get Vengeance I do fine, its just that first swap on fights when it happens early that's an issue. Also, while I've had fun in the past playing around and putting up ranking parses on Ultraxion and the like once we had them on farm, I've been a tank forever, and was a healer back in Vanilla and early t4. So even now I have to force myself to take my dps seriously and when I do well there's no emotional reward. I'd far rather set a new personal best for least damage taken by myself and the raid. Our monk, on the other hand, has spent his entire raiding career as dps and frequently ranks. His approach is to make sure he stays alive, and once over that threshold, do as much damage as possible. On Iron Qon, for example, I'm easier to keep alive but having him as the tank makes the fight noticeably shorter. Its taken longer than it should have for me to recognize that his approach, while different from mine, is indeed quite effective and he's probably a better tank than he was a dps.

For tank dps next tier, while Vengeance scaling was nerfed, I still think Prot Pallies scale more tightly with Vengeance than any other class (with Prot Warriors second) and I think we will continue to have the most variable damage output based on raid size/difficulty.

For 10N, my best guess is:
Monk>War/Bear>DK>Paladin

But for 25H, I expect:
Monk>War>Bear/Paladin>DK

But for both 10N and 25H I expect there to be a lot less real estate between the top and bottom than there was in 5.3.

While I've also tanked from t1 through t15, almost exclusively (barring a few stints as DPS in t10 and 13 due to length of patches), I'm much the same mindset as your monk. Probably in large part because of the way in which the game looks at survival versus throughput as very different metrics of success.

Survival is, by and large, binary. Either you live through the hit/event/phase, or you die. You can ALMOST die, but by pure nature of definition, that means that you DIDN'T die, ergo, you survived. I suppose you can try to limit those events (of almost dying) in an effort to remove potential deaths shortly thereafter, but at the core of it all remains the fact that it's still a binary outcome.

Throughput, whether it's HPS or DPS, is less rigid. While some events like hit or crit are a binary outcome, the sum is usually what is examined, and is far less so. You have varying degrees of success, which incidentally do contribute to a very binary outcome of the encounter: success or failure.

As the game, and specifically the tank metagame, has evolved over the last 10 (holy shit!) years, we've seen many binary things removed in favor of a sliding scale. Things like Defense gear and cap, and more recently, things like AM superseding passive avoidance in terms of importance. The one caveat or exception to this would be TPS, which I'd argue has gone from a sliding scale (spam sunders!) to binary (put on RF/DefStance/Blood pres), but I digress. My main point here is that almost everything about the tanking meta is now a sliding scale for success, with the only binary remnant being that baseline gear level for survival. Stat parity has been adjusted so that there is no (or rarely) bonus stam/armor items like in the past, save things like socket bonuses. It's quite easy to math out that you simply need X amount of ilvl to survive a given event. After that baseline is reached, the entire discussion moves to the sliding scale that dictates how much success you'll have at your desired outcome.

For you, it sounds like you desire high TDR, which is what many people think (or scream) that a tank should favor.
For me, and the monk, we desire high throughput (probably as a nature of me being a 10H raider)
For others, maybe it's something else entirely.

My point in this diatribe is that the baseline level of survival in order to "push the binary off the table" is reached quite early and easily. After that, we have a LOT of say in how we play and gear, and it's almost entirely non-related to survival. Sure, stacking haste DOES benefit our survival, but we have enough HoPo gen naturally to cover all events with ShotR at zero haste. Logically, this is obvious, since Blizz can't design an encounter that requires higher ShotR uptime because Johnny LFR doesn't understand how Haste works with ProtPals, meaning that he'd never have a chance to survive. Because of this, our 2 options boil down to "do more damage" or "survive harder". And, since survival is already a binary outcome, it's a bit redundant to opt for the second choice, IMO.

I know you're a smart fellow, and a vet of the game and of tanking like myself, so I won't belabor the point that tanks (for better or worse) have changed. I think it would behoove all involved in Blizz simply made boss damage more meaningful/threatening, so that tanks would perhaps have to raise their base level of survival (via things like stacking more mastery on BrM's or Prots, stamina being more desired, etc), but that happened in t11-13 and caused a nasty arms race and scaling issues, so I'm not sure we want to venture down that road again.

I would like to know how you expect 10H to play out, in terms of stack-ranking. Maybe I've just not met/seen any good DKs or Bears...or warriors, but I don't see them pulling ahead in 10H content over Paladins, personally. Warriors may have a shot, given the bolus of buffs they've received, but I figured we'd see Monk > Prots > Bear > DK in terms of relative power. As you said, the gaps should be closer though.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

While I've also tanked from t1 through t15, almost exclusively (barring a few stints as DPS in t10 and 13 due to length of patches), I'm much the same mindset as your monk. Probably in large part because of the way in which the game looks at survival versus throughput as very different metrics of success.

Survival is, by and large, binary. Either you live through the hit/event/phase, or you die. You can ALMOST die, but by pure nature of definition, that means that you DIDN'T die, ergo, you survived. I suppose you can try to limit those events (of almost dying) in an effort to remove potential deaths shortly thereafter, but at the core of it all remains the fact that it's still a binary outcome.

Throughput, whether it's HPS or DPS, is less rigid. While some events like hit or crit are a binary outcome, the sum is usually what is examined, and is far less so. You have varying degrees of success, which incidentally do contribute to a very binary outcome of the encounter: success or failure.

As the game, and specifically the tank metagame, has evolved over the last 10 (holy shit!) years, we've seen many binary things removed in favor of a sliding scale. Things like Defense gear and cap, and more recently, things like AM superseding passive avoidance in terms of importance. The one caveat or exception to this would be TPS, which I'd argue has gone from a sliding scale (spam sunders!) to binary (put on RF/DefStance/Blood pres), but I digress. My main point here is that almost everything about the tanking meta is now a sliding scale for success, with the only binary remnant being that baseline gear level for survival. Stat parity has been adjusted so that there is no (or rarely) bonus stam/armor items like in the past, save things like socket bonuses. It's quite easy to math out that you simply need X amount of ilvl to survive a given event. After that baseline is reached, the entire discussion moves to the sliding scale that dictates how much success you'll have at your desired outcome.

For you, it sounds like you desire high TDR, which is what many people think (or scream) that a tank should favor.
For me, and the monk, we desire high throughput (probably as a nature of me being a 10H raider)
For others, maybe it's something else entirely.

My point in this diatribe is that the baseline level of survival in order to "push the binary off the table" is reached quite early and easily. After that, we have a LOT of say in how we play and gear, and it's almost entirely non-related to survival. Sure, stacking haste DOES benefit our survival, but we have enough HoPo gen naturally to cover all events with ShotR at zero haste. Logically, this is obvious, since Blizz can't design an encounter that requires higher ShotR uptime because Johnny LFR doesn't understand how Haste works with ProtPals, meaning that he'd never have a chance to survive. Because of this, our 2 options boil down to "do more damage" or "survive harder". And, since survival is already a binary outcome, it's a bit redundant to opt for the second choice, IMO.

I know you're a smart fellow, and a vet of the game and of tanking like myself, so I won't belabor the point that tanks (for better or worse) have changed. I think it would behoove all involved in Blizz simply made boss damage more meaningful/threatening, so that tanks would perhaps have to raise their base level of survival (via things like stacking more mastery on BrM's or Prots, stamina being more desired, etc), but that happened in t11-13 and caused a nasty arms race and scaling issues, so I'm not sure we want to venture down that road again.

I would like to know how you expect 10H to play out, in terms of stack-ranking. Maybe I've just not met/seen any good DKs or Bears...or warriors, but I don't see them pulling ahead in 10H content over Paladins, personally. Warriors may have a shot, given the bolus of buffs they've received, but I figured we'd see Monk > Prots > Bear > DK in terms of relative power. As you said, the gaps should be closer though.

Its funny, I actually was more interested in maximizing my dps back in BC because threat was a serious issue them (not that you had a lot of rotational options other than spamming harder. Mostly it was stuff like "Ok, the first mob is down to 30%. If I stop working on it now, I'll lose threat before it dies but that's ok because the mob will die before it reaches the dps anyway. That means I can start building threat on mob #2."). Now that threat is almost a non-issue (Warriors and SPs can put out some impressive dps on the pull when everything procs which is part of why I like HA. I typically macro it to AW and pop them both on the pull, when I get to pull, just to make sure everything goes smoothly) and really the only threat race I need to worry about is tank vs tank I just don't find it as compelling.

What to you mean by stack ranking? Tank dps? A broader measure of tank usefulness? Speaking really generally, its kinda hard to say until the strats crystalize a little better for the fights because I can see a lot of folks being useful. Our main back-up tank is a DK and he can do all sorts of wicked stuff in add fights, which it looks like SoO is going to be heavy-ish on. But I'm still a little worried about their AM getting overwhelmed in Heroics. Warriors look like they might be surprisingly strong once they get 2P, and if they really get a chance to bust out their toolkit like Paladins did in ToT, they could be monsters. Sadly, I don't really see anything that screams "You want a Bear for this" and Bear utility still feels light though we lost ours right after ToES came out and I'm sure there's value in Symbiosis and what not. Monks should still be great.

What to you mean by stack ranking? Tank dps? A broader measure of tank usefulness? Speaking really generally, its kinda hard to say until the strats crystalize a little better for the fights because I can see a lot of folks being useful. Our main back-up tank is a DK and he can do all sorts of wicked stuff in add fights, which it looks like SoO is going to be heavy-ish on. But I'm still a little worried about their AM getting overwhelmed in Heroics. Warriors look like they might be surprisingly strong once they get 2P, and if they really get a chance to bust out their toolkit like Paladins did in ToT, they could be monsters. Sadly, I don't really see anything that screams "You want a Bear for this" and Bear utility still feels light though we lost ours right after ToES came out and I'm sure there's value in Symbiosis and what not. Monks should still be great.

Desirability/usefulness, moreso than DPS was what I was referring to. Unique or class based utility, niche strengths (and weaknesses), and the "late expansion gear inflation makes me do crazy shit" factor that we always see.

I basically see it as:
1) Monks - Still have no nerfs to raid-guard, still insane DPS and scale well even with low-V. Set bonuses aren't stellar, but stat inflation means they can be literally invulnerable.
2) Warriors - As always, late expansion scaling shows up, meaning that warriors can easily cap mastery, hit and exp, and then dump into crit or avoidance for some serious throughput. Couple that with the plethora of buffs, high mobility and control, and their class-based raid CDs, and you have a very strong all-round tank. 2pc is icing on the cake.
3) Paladins - The GC change was promising some serious abuse potential, until we got the 1/n V nerf AND the overall 1.5% nerf. V nerfs hit us pretty hard (relatively speaking) given our poor low-V scaling. SS compounds this, and the removal of BH means most of our OMGOP healing got pruned back. SOI is intact, so it's not cataclysmic, but still knocking us down a peg, IMO.
4) Druids - Buffs to stam, new barkskin, and the fact that they still scale well with low-V serves to bump these guys up from bottom rung. Solid tank, under the radar for most, but still hamstrung by poor AM system (comparatively speaking) and reliance on avoidance. Still have some useful raid CDs and great mobility, because druid.
5) DK - No AM related V-scaling, no real raid CD, poor mobility, highest DMG taken, and reliance on reactive healing sets these at the bottom of my list. Diseases are their saving grace on add-heavy fights, given the rules about target cap for AOE and snapshotting DOTs, but even so, they're still behind an equal geared monk or warrior on throughput, and very close with bears.

Just my $0.02 for 10H, was curious about yours given your rankings for 10N and 25H. Sadly my 25 days are over for now

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Ah, I see. Ok, yeah, I see things fairly similarly. I'm unsure how punchy the Monk "adjustment" is going to be. My understanding was that Monk specials were accidentally converting Vengeance to DPS at AP/11 instead of AP/14 but when they had a special that used Weapon Damage (no idea which ones that would have been) it was multiplied by 0.4 (so, 40% of what it should have been). I haven't really followed Monks that closely on the PTR so I don't know exactly how this has all been applied or what's been done. Annedcotally, Monks still put out solid dps on the PTR and I think they'll still be top dog among tanks but I think it'll be close. That could have an impact on their raid-guarding as well. Monk survivability is, I agree, where they're really going to shine. I think its going to be hard to kill a good Monk tank.

I'm still curious to see what the end up doing with Bears on Nazgrim. 30 second Barkskin may have to do, but that's really not a good answer.

Edit - Oh, I'm tanking 10s these days as well. We used to do 25s but organizationally I just don't see us going back to it. I used to toy with the idea of recruiting back up to 25s, and I do think they feel more "epic", but its SO much more work and effort I've slowly accepted that its just not worth it.

As someone already said paladins will be fine. We still have very strong mechanics and cds. Our initial threat/damage without (high)vengeance is complete garbage though and still hasn't been addressed/Blizzard have stated they think its fine.

We are warriors, born from the light
An army for freedom, defenders of life
Warriors, euphoria will rise
Returning from darkness we bury all lies

Just saying, pally's were absurd. I haven't tanked since BC, and for fun I decided to tank a pug after missing my actual raid. I tanked a 3/13H solo tanking in 50% dps gear. So I think these changes are definaty necessary.

Just saying, pally's were absurd. I haven't tanked since BC, and for fun I decided to tank a pug after missing my actual raid. I tanked a 3/13H solo tanking in 50% dps gear. So I think these changes are definaty necessary.

Ok, fine. I'll bite. Which 3 did you solo tank in your pug? I want to see a log.

Just saying, pally's were absurd. I haven't tanked since BC, and for fun I decided to tank a pug after missing my actual raid. I tanked a 3/13H solo tanking in 50% dps gear. So I think these changes are definaty necessary.

DPS gear? o_O What the hell is that?

Originally Posted by huth

It's kinda amazing how many hands these guys have, anyway. Our tank pally can put his hands on 3 different people and still hold his weapon and shield and make unsavory gestures towards enemies.

isn't this the case for all the tanks? dps is very lackluster without vengeance. besides, you have salvation to put on the other tank if the situation calls for it.

Originally Posted by Xalzel

Just saying, pally's were absurd. I haven't tanked since BC, and for fun I decided to tank a pug after missing my actual raid. I tanked a 3/13H solo tanking in 50% dps gear. So I think these changes are definaty necessary.

aren't all non spirit plate tanking gear for pallies? there is no such thing as dps gear when prottadins are concerned.

isn't this the case for all the tanks? dps is very lackluster without vengeance. besides, you have salvation to put on the other tank if the situation calls for it.

But not as much for others. Although this mostly matters with solo-play, not in raids. (Although early MSV bosses where a pain too. Not to mention Garalon. >.> )
Monks/Druids and DKs have fairly solid DPS even without vengeance.

Originally Posted by huth

It's kinda amazing how many hands these guys have, anyway. Our tank pally can put his hands on 3 different people and still hold his weapon and shield and make unsavory gestures towards enemies.

Yeah, while crit gear is not optimal, it is still tanking gear, since an item with crit is gonna have atleast 1 more useful stat on it.
Also have to consider the item level, I would rather take a 522 crit item over a 502 item for example.
So while it is not the best, it is for sure still "tank gear".

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

Personally i just sort of get the feeling that blizz doesnt know what to do with pallies. We went from block capping in cata to stacking haste for more uptime on shotr and now they change the GC proc to make parry and dodge compete? Tanking has actually became fun trying to push for more dps and increase survivablity at the same time by stacking haste.

A lot of these changes wont mean anything to the heroic raiding guilds but i see these changes taking a stonger toll on casual guilds in terms of less raid healing and less tank dps.

Personally i just sort of get the feeling that blizz doesnt know what to do with pallies.

A more charitable interpretation is that they are learning from experience. One thing I like about WoW is that Blizzard allow add-ons and then sometimes incorporate innovations made by players/modders into their core game (auras, raid frames, equipment manager etc). Perhaps in the same vein, Blizzard putting haste on our tier gear is an encouraging sign that they are running with an unexpected but enjoyable development in the game. If WoW never changed then I suspect our sometimes extravagant /played time would start to feel rather dull.

A lot of these changes wont mean anything to the heroic raiding guilds but i see these changes taking a stonger toll on casual guilds in terms of less raid healing and less tank dps.

I am in a casual guild and play with a much more skillful co-tank (bear) and good healers/dps. But I think they were finding my raid healing and tank dps a little excessive. On some fights, I'd beat our best dps and bite at the heals of decent healers. From what I can gather, the nerfs will reign it back but not hammer me into the ground. It's not healthy to have one or two (monk also) tanks clearly better than the rest.